Comex gold open interest continues to surge, now up 100,000 contracts in 7 days

July 12, 2024

++++++++++++++++ Gold

Comex gold open interest continues to soar with total OI surging 30,100 yesterday to 559,000. That is a 7 (biz) day increase of over 100,000 contracts. OI is the highest since June 2022:

Yesterday’s OI increase was the sixth highest daily increase in the last 5 years:

Most of yesterday’s OI increase has accrued to the December contract as that OI increased by 28,000 contracts of the 30,100 total. Currently most traders are rolling from the August to December contract so new positions are posturing for the incumbent active contract.

The August contract is 13 days to first notice and OI is about 6% less than the 5 year mean:

++++++++++++++ Silver

The upcoming August contract, an inactive month, has OI of 1,270 with 13 days to first notice … above the 5 year mean of 1,090 but off somewhat from its earlier high of 1,600 contracts:

+++++++++++ Silver Vaults

Yesterday and today’s vault report had substantial activity. First, let’s talk about Asahi’s vault. HSBC had issued delivery notices on 5.71 million oz during the first few days after first notice on the August contract. Most of that metal was bought by a customer account at PTG (5.56 million oz). PTG is a relative unknown. Soon thereafter 5.78 million oz was transferred from registered to eligible at Asahi’s vault. That was an indication the new owner intended to remove the metal from the vault.

Over the last 3 days (Jul 9 to 11) 1.78 million oz has left the vault. The implication is that this PTG customer account is now removing silver from the vault, one truckload per day. If that is correct, there would be another 4.0 million oz remaining on the silver bought by PTG.

The moral of that story is that much of the metal being moved into comex by HSBC is subsequently being bought and moved out of the vaults. You can see that activity at Asahi’s vault on the plot below:

Brink’s vault has also had substantial activity the last 2 days. Yesterday’s report had 1.2 million oz transfer out of registered. Today’s report had 1.2 million oz moved into the vault apparently unrelated to the prior day activity. However, there was an “adjustment” of 3.6 million oz. Normally the “adjustment” category is used for transfers from eligible to registered (or versa vice). In this case it appears that 3.6 million oz was somehow discovered lurking at Brink’s vault. These nonsensical “adjustments” are rare, but have occurred in the past. Thus, Brinks’ vault had a 4.9 million oz increase today.

The plot below shows that activity at Brinks:

The plot of the entire comex rollup is as follows:

The numbers to the oz:

+++++++++++++ Gold Vaults

Brinks’ vault had 25.2 koz transferred out of registered: